The Ripple Effect (2 page)

“I don’t know. I just picked her up out along Roberts Road. There’s a kid,” he said in sudden memory.

“She’s in a bad way,” said Olive sternly. “Out.”

Stan went.

The child was still crying but his voice had almost gone. He looked up at Stan with big, frightened, brown eyes and stuck grimy fingers in his mouth.

“What’s your name, little feller?” asked Stan gently. “I think we better get you cleaned up and fed. How about that?”

He took the toddler home to Amy who fussed and fiddled, calmed, washed, fed and cuddled the child so that within an hour he was fast asleep in the cot their son Evan had outgrown years before. Amy had resisted selling it, saying vaguely there might be a need for it one day.

The wind changed and strengthened after lunch and the dense smoke haze cleared almost miraculously to a light charred eucalyptus scented blue grey. Word came through that the fire had turned on itself and was under control. The volunteer fighters straggled back to their homes.

Stan, caught up in the aftermath, called in at the Medical Centre late that afternoon. The waiting room was nearly empty after the rush of patients. Jenny sat at her desk in her office, weary head resting on her hands. Stan tapped on the door.

“Oh, Stan.” The words came out in a sigh. Stan’s stomach lurched at the expression on her face. Wisps of gingery hair had escaped from her ponytail, her reddened eyes met his with a sheen of tears.

“What?”

“She was too small, Stan. I don’t have the equipment here to cope with dangerous births. Not enough blood in stock. It was too late, poor lamb.”

“You mean—?”

Jenny nodded. “We lost her. She had a massive haemorrhage. I couldn’t stop it.”

Stan stood helpless. The death of this girl he barely knew hit him harder than he expected. “You did your best, Jenny. You tried. If only I’d found her sooner.” He could still feel her fragility under his fingers as he’d lifted her.

“Would you like to see the baby?” she asked, hauling herself to her feet.

“The baby?”

“A girl. She’s fine and strong. The mother’s body puts all its energy into the growing baby. Amazing.”

“Did you find out her name?” asked Stan. He followed the white coat along the corridor.

“She never said a word.”

Stan gazed down at the tiny bundle in the crib. He remembered how he’d instantly adored his own children, how he couldn’t believe something so little could survive.

“Did she know?”

“We told her she’d had a daughter. She was too weak to hold her but she smiled when Olive rested her on her chest.”

“She was so pretty,” whispered Stan.

“What about her other one?” asked Jenny. “What are we going to do with him? With both of them?”

“They’ll have to be adopted if we can’t find any relatives.”

Shay threw the bulging overnight bag into the hatchback of his red VW Golf and slammed the door. The cardboard box, stuffed with a homemade fruit cake, two jars of fig jam and a jar of lemon marmalade plus a bag of newly picked apricots from the tree out the back, sat safely on the floor. His jacket lay folded across the front passenger seat.

“That’s it,” he said. “All set.”

He turned to face his parents. Dad had his arm around Mum and she was wiping her eyes surreptitiously with the hem of the outsize orange shirt she had on over baggy blue jeans. Jedda had plopped himself on her foot and leaned against her leg.

“Keep in touch, won’t you.” She tried a smile but it wobbled.

Shay strode across and hugged her. “Don’t I always?” he said into her springy grey hair. The top of her head came up to his chin. “Shorty,” he murmured and she laughed softly.

“Drive carefully son. They’re targeting speeding at the moment and country roads have the worst accident statistics.”

“I know, Dad.” Once a cop always a cop. Didn’t matter he’d retired three years ago, old habits die hard. Shay bent to ruffle Jedda’s ears and the dog licked his hand. The plumed tail sent up a puff of dust as it thudded on the dry grass. “Goodbye Jed.”

It was always hard to leave once he’d made the effort to drive the six hours back home. For Birrigai was home and always would be no matter where he hung his shingle. The old house never changed, nestled into its cloak of shrubs and overhanging shade trees. The front garden had lost a few plants due to the ongoing dry but out the back Dad’s veggie patch and fruit trees were hanging on grimly.

“It was lovely to see you, I just wish you could visit more often.” Mum sniffed but smiled firmly with her brave face on.

“Amy, the boy’s got his own life to lead,” interrupted Dad. “He can’t keep nipping off to visit his parents. It’s too far.”

“You should come to Sydney and visit me,” said Shay.

“Your father hates the city.”

“Too noisy and the stink is something else,” said Dad. “Worse than anything you come across out here.”

“Even old Parker’s septic tank?” asked Shay with a sly grin.

“Well,” conceded Dad. “Maybe not.” He laughed and slapped Shay on the shoulder. “You’d better hit the road. Don’t want to arrive at peak hour.”

Jedda stood up and waved his tail regally, grinning from one to the other.

“Dad?” Shay glanced down at his feet then up into his father’s face. Should he mention the subject yet again? Risk leaving on a sour note, spoiling the taste of this, his first visit in months. “You know I only want to try to find my sister, don’t you? It’s something I’ve thought about nearly all my life and now seems like the right time. It’s not because I don’t love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“We know that, pet,” said Mum. Her round face crinkled with concern. She glanced at his father, seeking his agreement. “We just don’t want you to be disappointed. It can be very difficult. Might take years and she may not want her life disturbed. That’s if you ever track her down.”

Dad’s jaw tightened. He’d never admit it outright but his disapproval was clear. He didn’t want to discuss it. Changing the subject. Stonewalling all weekend. “They have those privacy laws for a reason, son.” Gravel voiced.

“I know.” One last try. Surely Dad could understand? He wasn’t a hard man. Not normally. But this topic hit something raw—must have done to provoke such an uncharacteristic response. “Can you imagine Lisa or Ben or Evan not wanting to know each other, or find each other, if they were split apart?”

The eyes narrowed. He said dismissively, “That’s different. You never knew her. She was a newborn baby when you were separated.”

“Or you, Shay. They’d want to find you,” his mother said fiercely. “You’re just as much part of this tribe as any one of the others, don’t ever forget that. I chose your name deliberately—it means gift and that’s what you were and still are.”

Shay stepped across and hugged his mother. She was a thousand times right. Adopted he may be but he never lacked for love from any of these people who had welcomed the lost toddler into their lives so wholeheartedly.

“And didn’t I pay for that at school,” he said in a choked voice. “Shame, shame.” His voice rose and fell in mock derision.

She pushed him away with a laugh. “It’s a good name, Shay Brookes. A good strong name. Goes well with the Doctor before it,” she said.

“Safe trip.” His father stuck out his hand, but the smile held the shadow of hurt in the tenseness of his mouth.

One last kiss, one last slap on the back and Shay was waving his arm out the window to the fast-receding figures in the rear view mirror. Mum and Dad. They’d always be Mum and Dad. Why couldn’t his father see that?

He knew his real mother was dead. Emily Grayson. Died in childbirth having his sister.
Dad said she’d never uttered a word about who she was or where she was from and he’d had a devil of a job tracking down her identity. No-one ever discovered who the missing father was or even if they’d had the same father. But he couldn’t have done better than Stan Brookes.

Shay hoped with all his heart they understood this unquenchable desire he had to find that little sister. Mum assured him she did and that Dad would come round, eventually. He’d known all along how he came to be adopted. They’d never lied to him. That was one of the strengths of the Brookes family—their honesty. Stan impressed his values upon the children and they’d all grown up valuing truth and openness. People always said they knew where they were with a Brookes.

Far from making him feel like a stray, Amy and Stan had made him feel special. A gift, she’d said just now. Was his sister regarded as a gift by her adoptive parents?

“Why didn’t you take both of us?” he’d asked once.

“Because we couldn’t handle a tiny baby as well as you and we didn’t have enough room in the house. The adoption people told us it would be difficult to place the two of you together but the baby would find a home very easily. We already said we wanted you with us.”

“Will I ever see her?”

“The other parents have to agree to it. Sometimes they think it’s best not to. Everyone has to agree.”

“I want to find her. I will find her one day,” he’d said with all the determination of an eight year old. “Do you know who has her?”

“No,” said Stan. “We don’t. We don’t even know her name.”

But surely his sister would be looking for him, wouldn’t she? She’d want to know her big brother. As adults no-one could tell them not to meet. Now he was not just an adult but an educated one, a doctor. He had time, he had resources and above all, he had determination.

Shay slowed the Golf and swung into the Birrigai Medical Centre parking area. One visit before he left town. Olive Newsome. The low white weatherboard building had expanded. It could handle a range of surgeries and hospitalisations, with two permanent doctors and three nurses.

The shade trees overhanging the buildings had grown and a neat garden greeted visitors instead of the previous straggly array of shrubs fighting for survival beside the path. The doctors’ names were displayed on a board by the glass front door, which had become automatic and slid open soundlessly as Shay approached, squinting slightly as the early morning sun broke over the roof of the building. Olive would be here first thing, his mother said.

Shay didn’t even bother to ask how she knew the roster of the Centre’s nursing staff. She always had and always would make it her business to know everything that went on in Birrigai.

Memories flooded back at the sight of the reception area, virtually unchanged since his childhood—sitting holding a wrist broken at footie training, a crack on the head which knocked him unconscious for a few seconds when he fell off his bike racing Alan and Jack and they all crashed spectacularly on that gravel corner by the tennis courts. Waiting with Amy and Lisa and Evan while Ben had his appendix out. All their disasters given over into the gentle, skilled hands of Jenny Cross. She couldn’t save his mother, he understood now in the light of his own training and knowledge, but she’d saved his sister. And she’d inspired him to become a doctor.

Doctor Jenny had passed away as the result of a car accident. He remembered the town plunged into mourning at her untimely death. He was fifteen and he’d shed salty, awkward tears because she was the link with his mother and his sister. Stan told him after her funeral how she cried that nightmarish day at not being able to save them both.

“She tried really hard,” he said. “She was heartbroken at losing the girl. She was so young and so pretty, your Mum.” Dad always spoke of Emily with a wistful faraway look in his eyes. “She was young enough to be my daughter. About Lisa’s age.”

Shay sat in the head nurse’s office with a cup of tea and Olive opposite, assessing him. She hadn’t changed a bit in all the twenty something years he’d known her. She’d be in her early sixties now. Thin, bony, short grey hair cut in a bob, wide blue eyes, forthright manner, generous to a fault, bossy as can be. In his experience as a doctor many of the best nurses were. His arrival at seven thirty-five in the morning didn’t appear to surprise her in the least.

“So you’re a doctor now,” she said.

“Yes, I qualified a few years ago. I’m working as a GP in a suburban practice in Sydney.” She’d know all that, of course, via the ever flourishing grapevine.

“Ever think of working in the country? There’s a chronic shortage out here.”

“I have, as a matter of fact. I feel I owe it to the community somehow…I don’t know…if it hadn’t been for Stan and Jenny who knows what would have become of me—and my sister.” How to steer her back to the topic burning his brain without being rude? She’d been delighted to see him, more so than he expected. Under the familiar, stern face a genuine warmth, and even pride, shone forth. Surprising.

“You were lucky,” she acknowledged. “The fires were devastating that year. Four people died on the same day. Could easily have been two more. Three, really. We thought maybe your father had been one of the casualties.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“Not that we know. A woman and her baby died in their farmhouse over Toolac way. Their bodies were completely incinerated the fire was so intense. An elderly man died of smoke inhalation trying to save his house out along Mac’s Reef Road and a fire fighter was trapped, cut off from his truck. Everyone knew him—John Tooley—left a widow and three teenagers. Doubt whether he would have taken up with a young girl.” She smiled. “Or vice versa.”

Shay nodded. He knew all those details. They’d become part of the folk lore of the town—the fires of ’81.

“She was seventeen, we discovered,” said Olive. “Your mother.”

He listened while she told him the same story he’d heard over and over. “She was a runaway and Stan found her on the missing person’s register. She came from Toowoomba but her parents didn’t want to have anything to do with her or her children. They were religious and very strict. That type doesn’t have much to do with Christianity in my view,” she said. “For all their holier than thou attitude. Fancy turning your back on your daughter and her babies in their hour of need and calling yourself a Christian. They’ve both passed on now.”

Olive snorted with disgust and slurped a mouthful of tea.

Shay put his empty mug on her desk. He needed more. He didn’t need the same story again, he knew it inside out. “Olive, I’ve decided to try to find my sister. I mean, I’m going to find my sister.”